Is YouTube Feeling the Heat From Instagram IGTV, Already?

YouTube has always been the go-to platform for all the online videos, for a very long time now. However, with the rapid technological advancement, the video streaming services have evolved to a very great extent. Today, there are a lot of options available for the users, in case they wish to kill their time through watching online videos. Instagram recently joined the bandwagon by launching IGTV – an app for watching long-form verticle videos.

This new competitor is seemingly disturbing YouTube to a very great extent.Instagram’s long-form vertical videos have become a constant cause of worry for the Google-owned YouTube. The terror is such that YouTube is luring some of its biggest stars by launching exclusive deals – simply for the sake of retaining them on its platform. According to Business Insider, YouTube is attempting to sign deals with a few of its top stars (almost 5-7 figure deals) just to make sure that YouTube is their first preference whenever they wish to upload or distribute their content.

All in all, the key idea behind this move is to keep its entertainers away from jumping to IGTV. According to a popular creator Marques Brownlee, undeniably, there is no better place for video content creators other than YouTube, but seeing the lavish welcome, IGTV is most likely to capture the second position.

Instagram Has Huge Userbase Already

Instagram is no new seed in the garden; Once popular only for sharing photos, now has over 1 billion MAUs. With over 500 million people surfing the application daily, IGTV is not an easy rival for YouTube. Moreover, it has the backing and the resources of Facebook, the most used social media network in the world.

YouTube’s Efforts to Retain Its Top Stars

YouTube will be sending over these checks on a “case-by-case” basis. The contracts that the entertainers would sign will guarantee popular content exclusively for the platform. However, the number of people being offered this deal is still not revealed, with a lot of stars already in talks with YouTube. However, since YouTube has always been creator’s first choice, most of them are willing to make it their primary home.

YouTube says that it does not feel that it is making any extra efforts or walking any extra miles, along with playing down the talk of big-money contracts. This is not something new, as a lot of popular YouTube personalities have always received massive paychecks to showcase its users of YouTube’s new features. The Google-owned company has tied contracts with several top creators in the past, to launch new content for its userbase. Recently, YouTube replaced its 3-year old YouTube Red and launched YouTube Premium, which gives you an ad-free experience, background play and access to the full slate of YouTube Originals.

However, this statement might just be a cover for YouTube, to ward off all the thoughts people have regarding it being insecure about its new competitor Instagram.

Instagram IGTV To Take Over YouTube Anytime Soon?

From both a consumption and a content-creation perspective, IGTV is going to take YouTube head on, which proudly acclaims of having more than 1 billion users. Besides, YouTube is already well established as a platform for creators to distribute long-form video. By capitalising the video selfies format and growing popularity of portrait mode shirt-videos Instagram hopes that this will be helpful for already popular creators, who have a lot of followers. However, IGTV taking over YouTube is not happening anytime soon.

There are still some key differences between IGTV and YouTube as products, the biggest being their approaches to formatting. YouTube has successfully become the premier online destination for only digital-first creators and for mainstream music and television content, owing to its horizontal formatting, YouTube’s horizontal videos make natural sense for all types of videos.